The Scream, the most famous painting of Norwegian Expressionist Edvard Munch, cried out against the eternal horror of everyday existence though a tree stump in Norway. Kjell Marius Mathisen, a man who works in the cultural heritage field for the Oppland county government, spotted it and took this photo.
Mathisen insists that the shape of the rings is "just a coincidence." But Munch himself might disagree. He wrote of the moment which inspired this painting:
I was walking along the road with two friends The Sun was setting – the Sky turned blood-red. And I felt a wave of Sadness – I paused tired to Death – Above the blue-black Fjord and City Blood and Flaming tongues hovered My friends walked on – I stayed behind – quaking with Angst – I felt the great Scream in Nature
China hosted an international water buffalo bodypainting competition on May 18 in Pu'er, Yunnan Province. 48 water buffaloes participated. The winning team was a group of local schoolchildren who walked away with the 100,000 yuan ($16,005 USD) prize.
That’s not surprising because painting on water buffalos is a well-established local custom. It's a traditional means of protecting them from predators:
According to legend, a villager once saw his water buffalo getting attacked by a tiger. As the creatures rolled around on the field, mud and blood covered the buffalo's body.
The bull looked so terrifying that the tiger got scared and ran away. After that locals started painting on their cattle to keep the predators away.
The tradition developed into a popular festival held each year to celebrate harvest and honor the cattle.
You can see more photos of these colorful beasts at Amusing Planet.
On Thursday, a black bear in the Pebble Creek neighborhood of Daytona Beach, Florida spent a day knocking over trash cans and bird feeders before climbing into a hammock. It had, after all, been a long and tiring day. It was time to take a break.
Rafael Torres photographed it lying and rolling around in it for about 20 minutes. He got within 60 feet of it. The bear didn't seem to mind. At about 8:15 PM, it climbed out of the hammock and wandered off. You can see more photos of the bear here.
When your website gets invited to a ball, take her down to Victor Farentina's Web in Vogue, where you can find the latest fashions for the web elite. He's got designs for reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Vine, and more.
He doesn't have a design for Neatorama, but I can take care of that.
Mine is Groundhog Day, which kinda/sorta says good things about me:
People admire and trust you for your lack of ego. Now's the perfect time to steal their valuables . . . or perhaps their hearts?
I can work with that.
Comedian Steve Patrick Adams drew this chart of Bill Murray's best known movies and what your favorite among them says about your personality and character. You can view a larger version here.
Credit for the headline goes to David Burge, from whom I first encountered this video.
It wasn't until after I had watched the entire video and did some research that I discovered that the man in it is a real person, not an actor performing in a satire. To my surprise, there actually is a man named Cameron Carpenter noted for his high degree of skill as an organist. The man in the video is Carpenter himself, not a comedian lampooning him.
Yes, really!
Thanks to him, we are facing an impending revolutionary moment in music. Carpenter says so at 3:19:
It's frightening. It's monumental. It's just going to be beyond anything that I could have told you about.
Which Carpenter then immediately follows at 3:26 with this profound expression:
Conner Flynn at Technabob suggests that this movie be entitled Batman and Captain Picard Fight Aliens: Prometheus: First Contact Rises. That is an outstanding idea!
I propose that Patrick Stewart play the role of Batman and Ben Affleck play Picard. The xenomorphs would require multiple actors, but Robin Williams should play the Queen.
To flesh out the supporting characters, bring in Gilbert Gottfried to play Alfred Pennyworth and the current Lassie to play Commander Riker.
Artist Jimsmash has the story concept ready to go. Hollywood, get to work.
In 1927, Dorothy Gerber was straining vegetables through a seive to make them edible for her baby daughter Sally. Her husband, Daniel Gerber, owned a canning factory. He said that machines in the factory could carry out that process a lot faster. Dorothy proposed that he do precisely that.
Thus was born the Gerber baby products commercial empire.
To market his products better, Gerber held a contest to compose an image of a baby that could serve as a logo. Dorothy Hope Smith, an artist, made a charcoal sketch of a baby who lived nearby. This baby was Anne Turner Cook. Smith won the contest and Cook went down in advertising history at the Gerber Baby.
Cook is now 87 years old and every bit as lovely as she was eight decades ago. CBS News interviewed her about her life as the Gerber Baby. You can watch the video here.
A food truck is a mobile kitchen where you go to get food. A reverse food truck is a place to go and donate food and money. Finnegans, a brewery in Minneapolis, made one in order to help feed hungry people in the Upper Midwest. Martin Williams, the company's pro bono ad agency, proposed the idea and Jacquie Berglund, the founder and CEO of Finnegans, ran with it.
The truck travels wherever people congregate in Minneapolis. Sometimes people mistake it for a regular food truck and try to place orders. Organizer Angie Lee says:
They'll try and order a hamburger or a taco and we say no, we're actually taking food. And then they're like, oh my gosh, this is the coolest thing ever.
Finnegans hopes to collect $50,000 worth of food over the summer using the truck.
"What time is it?" You may say that question at work or hear it from your co-workers. But this question is really asking something else: "Can we go home yet?" This wall clock by M&Co will answer that question one way or another. Until we have a "yes," the minutes will drag on.
Pictured above is a scene from Parade, an interactive art installation by Laurent Craste at the Chromatic art festival in Montreal. We've previously seen his whacking on porcelain sculptures. Now he's being a bit more gentle. His porcelain candlesticks look fairly ordinary. But introduce a swinging work lamp, and they become elegant dancers.
They remind me of Lumière from Disney's Beauty and the Beast.
In the beginning, after focus group testing, God created the heaven and the earth. Unfortunately, being an inexperienced designer, he did not understand that clients do not always express their desires in a clear manner.
On the seventh day, he rested from his labors. Mike Lacher, having examined the preliminary design, sent a lengthy email to God about what he saw so far:
Hi God,
Thanks so much for the latest round of work. Really coming together. Few points of feedback:
1 – Really liking the whole light thing but not totally sure about the naming system. “Day” and “night” are OK but we feel like there’s more we can do here. Thoughts? Definitely need to nail this down ASAP.
2 – Re: the “sky”… not really feeling the color here. Would like something that pops more. Please send additional options. […]
6 – Seas teeming with life is fine, but again, we need to reduce the sea. This is a showstopper for us.
7 – Are the winged birds final, or placeholder? Some kind of weird stuff going on with those. Just want to get some clarification before giving more feedback.
8 – Can we get more livestock and wild animals that move along the ground according to their kinds? Again, the passion points for our target users (slide eighteen) are ground and animals that move along the ground. Whatever we can do to increase the amount of ground will go a long way toward converting our users from passive consumers into brand evangelists. […]
Realize it’s Saturday and you were planning to be OOO tomorrow to admire your creation and everything, but I’m hoping you can keep rolling on this through the weekend. Need to get this in front of my exec team by EOD Monday so hoping to sync up EOD Sunday. Will be around all weekend via email and chat if anything comes up. Looking to you and your team for a big win here.
Thanks!
Mike
Please consider the environment before printing this email
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is, of course, a majestic tale of one man's struggle against the looters who seek to rob him of the fruits of his genius and to break his will and desire to be an individual. Mallory Ortberg quotes at length from it in The Toast:
“Malfoy bought the whole team brand-new Nimbus Cleansweeps!” Ron said, like a poor person. “That’s not fair!”
“Everything that is possible is fair,” Harry reminded him gently. “If he is able to purchase better equipment, that is his right as an individual. How is Draco’s superior purchasing ability qualitatively different from my superior Snitch-catching ability?”
“I guess it isn’t,” Ron said crossly.
Harry laughed, cool and remote, like if a mountain were to laugh. “Someday you’ll understand, Ron.”
At Hogwarts, Harry teaches the other students how to be free. He does this not for their sake, but for his own:
Professor Snape stood at the front of the room, sort of Jewishly. “There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don’t expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making. However, for those select few who possess, the predisposition…I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.”
Harry’s hand shot up.
“What is it, Potter?” Snape asked, irritated.
“What’s the value of these potions on the open market?”
“What?”
“Why are you teaching children how to make these valuable products for ourselves at a schoolteacher’s salary instead of creating products to meet modern demand?”
“You impertinent boy–”
“Conversely, what’s to stop me from selling these potions myself after you teach us how to master them?”
“I–”
“This is really more of a question for the Economics of Potion-Making, I guess. What time are econ lessons here?”
“We have no economics lessons in this school, you ridiculous boy.”
Harry Potter stood up bravely. “We do now. Come with me if you want to learn about market forces!”
The students poured into the hallway after him. They had a leader at last.
The thrilling anime series Attack on Titan has been a huge hit. Fans around the world have found the story of humans standing against annihilation to be compelling. We've previously seen some of the fan art and tattoos that these fans have made. Now let's look at amazing works of cosplay.
Yuki Goddess a professional cosplayer in Thailand with an impressive portfolio of work, including many costumes inspired by Attack on Titan. Here's a particularly clever one that shows the hero Eren Yeager in battle.
Here's one of the most ingenious, original costumes that I've ever seen. Drabblemeister uses a hoop skirt to show Carla Jaeger being eaten by a titan. (via The Mary Sue)
He's not out of diapers yet, but this toddler is ready to defend humanity. Here's a very young Captain Levi of the Survey Corps. His father, TOMY_papa, made the costume.
It's Christmas time at the Survey Corps' headquarters. Everyone got into the spirit of the season at a cosplay shoot in northern California last year.
